The number of online purchases of digital assets such as computer programs, video games, songs, movies, and the like has exponentially increased over the past several years. In a traditional transaction, a user purchases a copy of a digital asset and has the rights to access only that particular copy of the digital asset. However, this results in a point of contention between the purchaser and the distributor of the digital asset. Many purchasers feel that they should be able to access the digital asset in general and should not be limited to accessing only the particular copy that they purchased. This is particularly the case when the copy of a digital asset purchased by a user becomes lost or corrupted due to, for example, a hard-drive failure. In this scenario, it would be desirable for the user to be able to obtain a copy of the digital asset from a friend or some other source. Thus, there is a need for a system and method providing Digital Rights Management (DRM) in a manner that permits a user to access both the particular copy of a digital asset purchased by the user as well as copies of the digital asset purchased by other users.